Month: February 2016

Today I got all the new supports in place and functioning.  The trailer is now sitting on them.  The tongue jack is in the air by about a quarter inch:

and the other jacks that were supporting it are also free.  Like this:

 

By about an eighth of an inch. It looks like this:
Yes, I know there’s a larger overhang in the back.  But there’s minimal weight there, and that part is angled up. I don’t see a need to add a support behind the rear door. I’ll let it sit overnight, then check whether those temporary supports are touching.  I wouldn’t be astonished if it settles by up to a quarter inch, but it should be no more than that.  Assuming all is stable I can remove all the bolts that hold the body to the frame.  Then remove the wheels and let the frame down.

That’s all for today, but a big step.

I’ve been thinking for the last two days about how to get the body of the trailer separate from the frame and supported in a way that will let me replace the floor.  This is what I’ve decided on.

I bought a decent floor jack designed for cars.  With that I jacked up the frame with trailer stabilization jacks, and supported it on all four corners.  Each looks more-or-less like this:

Note that this is NOT SAFE.  I would be taking my life in my hands if I went under it while it was supported like this. The frame and body are still connected, and the tires are still on. The left wheel is just up in the air, and it’s easy to lift the right one up. If something happens and these jacks collapsed or fell over sideways, ABSOLUTELY NOTHING BAD WOULD HAPPEN.

Lifting the right wheel doesn’t cause any movement on the jacks.  That’s important because later I will have to remove both wheels.  I don’t want to lift high enough to get the frame separation I need otherwise.

I build eight supports.  There’s a solid 3.5 x 3.5 column of wood, braced solidly with outriggers.  You can see one of them in the picture above. I’m putting a 2×4 alongside the existing 2×2 and preloading it with of those jacks.  Like this:

Now I can drill a couple holes and bolt those together.  If I do that for all eight supports, the trailer will be well and SAFELY supported. I’m guessing the full-up trailer will be around 4,000 pounds.  Maybe a bit higher. Dry and empty and with no batteries it should be slightly less.  Without the frame it should be under 3,000. Any one of those supports with two 3/8’s bolts should be able to carry that much weight with a little spare strength.  I’ll never go underneath the trailer unless it’s supported on at least six.

Just a couple photos today.  I finished polishing the two front panels.  I ran wires for the two front reading lights. Those are the first two where the wires are going to the interior, to the final location.  I had to make cutouts in the insulation for the wires.  Here we are with the wires in andthe insulation on (minus a few feet of aluminum tape.  I had run out.  After this photo I got more).

Again I had some final tweaks to do.  Planed a bit off the wood pieces around the windows.  Had to drill four new holes on between the two panels on the right.  A little push here and a little push there, and the front panels and window are on.

Those aren’t glass. They use polycarbonate with anti-scratch coating.  The white is the covering on the polycarbonate.  I’ll take that off when all the work is done.  There are aluminum awnings over the front windows, but I’ve only polished one of those. Also I’m almost out of screws. After I polish the other awning and the screws come in I’ll reinstall both. I’ve used something like 500 screws so far.  I have a couple hundred around and four hundred more on order.  There is some damage on the front, and one place where the skin is torn through.  I plan to put another layer on the very front, to cover these and to add some protection. It’s easier, cheaper, and faster to replace a strip across the front rather than the entire panel.

Now I’m working getting the trailer on supports stable enough that I can safely work under it (that part’s fairly easy), and where I can separate the frame from the body (not so easy).

My 15 year old nephew has been visiting, so I’ve been spending time with him in preference to trailer work, but I’ve still gotten some stuff done. I got an inexpensive Harbor Freight air compressor and sand blaster.  The first job was the back of the refrigerator (from 1985 but appears to work O.K.). It started out pretty rusty. The sand blaster got it to this condition:

 

and some high-temperature paint has it looking like this:

Then I got the final panel in on the front interior.  There is a bunch of bad black stains, but I found out about oxalic acid.  Apparently this is a known (to other people, not me) problem.  It’s not rot at all, it’s a reaction between the rust from the iron nails and the tannins in the wood.  Oxalic acid comes as a granular powder you mix with water.  Just dap it on the dark spots. Normal precautions with gloves and careful handling. It started like this:

and over an hour or so with periodic sponging it on, it went to

and eventually this:

I could have done a bit more, but I kind of wanted to see how this last bit would be.  Most or all of what’s left will be covered with molding.  After staining and one coat of polyurethane, the front interior looks like this:
If I were starting from scratch I’d use higher quality ply than this pine stuff for the ceiling and existing walls, but with the warm stain it’s not bad. I like the many-different-woods look and will be expanding that approach.

The next step is a big one.  I need to separate the house from the frame so I can de-rust and paint the frame and replace the floor.  More to come.

The trailer continues to progress. Once the front side “beams” cured I removed the front side panels and replaced them.  I did decide to glue those in place, like the previous ones were.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Then replaced the cross supports.

 

I cleaned up the upper side panel, and used that to properly locate the vertical supports at the front windows.  I had a little trouble getting those properly tied in, but I finally made some aluminum supports, so it looks like this now.

That seems to hold it pretty well. Now for a more interesting bit of carpentry.  There’s a challenge around the windows.  The window wants a flat surface, but the shell is of course curved.  That would imply the presence of something like this:

Which is obviously curved on once side and flat of the other. There should be six of those- one on each side of each of the two front and one rear window.  This is the only one I can find.  The others have completely disintegrated.  Also, notice the black stuff and putty between the curved and flat pieces.  That was all there was to protect that wood from rot.  It needs something of aluminum.  I already maded these pieces based on the curve on the back, but I recut them to fit this pattern.  Then I used one of these as a pattern,
and cut some aluminum sheet.  Clamped the wood into my vise, and clamped on the aluminum.

Hit a few hundred times with a plastic hammer, sometimes with the help of a wood bar.

And get this.

Some trimming, and this will precisely cover the hole.

And finally I decided to make the inner skin by laminating 1/8 ply.  I got some nice lauan ply.  The original interior was all pine plywood.  I like the idea of having different types of wood.  So here is three plies, laminated with epoxy.  I still have to do the upper panel.

 

Yesterday I laminated the new corner “beams”, using some marine epoxy thickened with microspheres. Since I had to let that cure, I didn’t do a lot else.

Today I removed the rear interior panel on both sides. I found there was a crack in both the existing corner pieces, and it came apart.  I spliced it back in place.

Note that the side panel is gone and you can see the aluminum. The existing panels were glued and nailed in place, so I had to do some planing and chiseling and scraping to get all the glued bits off.  I don’t intend to glue the new pieces in- I don’t think that’s necessary. I got the two new side panels cut but ran out of time to install them.  Those will be the baltic birch ply I used on the rear interior panel.

I’ve made some progress in the last couple days. We’ve had no rain for several days.  I’ve pulled off the front.  Here’s how I started (I already pulled out the front windows).

With the lower panel off you can start to see how bad the rot is up front.

 

After removing the second panel, the 2×2’s, and that horrible crepe paper insulation you can see more. The crumbly bits in the center of this picture used to be wood.

 

There are the horizontal 2×2’s.  The worst is one step short of dissolving.

After marking the locations of the 2×2’s and cutting the new horizontal supports I pulled off first two panels of the inner skin. The whole front of the trailer is now open.  Then I made some rough  L-brackets and attached them to the side panels so I can replace the lower part of the corner curved beams.  I guess you’d call them beams, although they are pretty weak.  Here’s the left side.

And the right side.

Those ensure that the shape of the new beams will be the same as the old ones. I’ve already ripped something like a dozen layers of doorskin. You see those in the last picture above lying against the wall. I intended to do the lamination today, but the right side is a bit wet.  Not bad, but enough to prevent good adhesion.  So I’ll let it dry overnight and see how it looks tomorrow.

 

Finishing off the back of the trailer has been about twenty times larger project than I thought.  As I mentioned in my last post, I got this really nice Baltic birch plywood for the back. It was really good, but stiff.  Very, very stiff.  To get it to form the curve at the back I had to slit it through about half the thickness on the outside.  Like this:

And with that I was able to make the curve.  It looked like this on the inside:

And this on the outside:

After slitting and forming the insulation I tried to get the panel on, but it just didn’t fit. Turns out there were two problem.  The 2×2 running across just below the window was almost an inch out of straight, pointing out.  And there was so much force required to pull the plywood in the right curve that it was even worse.  So I replaced the 2×2 with one closer to straight, and I slit the plywood completely through.  I’ll have to cover those slits with doorskin, but that I can do later.

 

With a little cutting here and a little planing there, and some pushing and tugging and some straps to help form the curve I was able to get everything to fit.  It’s not perfect, but it’s close. Here’s with the upper insulation on:

And before I closed up the back I tested the lights. One of the wires had pulled off the left taillight, and there’s no good way to replace it. I decided to get new lights. I wasn’t quite sure how to wire it up, since some of the wire color coding was off. Since the wiring was a bit strange and the wires were very old, I decided to run new wires.  And the ID lights didn’t work- one of the connectors had pulled loose, and I had to partially remove that panel.  Each panel with trailer lights has connectors so it can be removed and replaced with having to cut and splice.

I think there were four days of good weather when I started in the morning thinking I would close that day, and didn’t. But finally all that was done.  The panels were polished.  And now the back looks like this:

All overlaps sealed with butyl tape of course.  The left and right sides along the window have a hand-formed aluminum piece to cover the wood. Any competent metalworker would sneer at what I did, but it fits fairly well and the wood won’t rot there like the original did.